Ultime Menace

"Second in Command" is the best movie that I've seen with Jean-Claude Van Damme since his early films, "Bloodsport" of 1985, and "Lionheart" of 1990." As those films, this one has an interesting plot. There's more depth to the story than the usual fare of mayhem and gore in Van Damme films. As with some other of his films in the first decade of the 21st century, this film was made solely for video release. That may say a lot about the lack of ticket sales and profits from theater releases.

This film has a huge dose of the pyro-technics, mayhem and gore. But they don't consume most of the film. Instead, there's a plot with some realism about saving people in an American embassy. The story revolves around a rebellion in Moldova and an attack on the American embassy. The freely elected president of the country is being protected there. So, this film scores much better than the usual mindless mayhem of Van Damme films.

The idea of an embassy siege is not a contrived Hollywood plot. The fact that there have been such incidents in the recent past adds a sense of realism to the film. Of course, this was made before the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack of the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, in which the American ambassador and others were killed.

The writers may have been inspired by real incidents of the past. The most successful large rescue happened in 1991. That took place in Somalia. Armed rebellion broke out in Mogadishu in January. People from several countries made their way to the U.S. embassy. The rescue was called Operation Eastern Exit. Two huge helicopters delivered a team of 60 Marines and Navy SEALS to the compound on January 5. The choppers returned to Guam with the first 61 evacuees. Then, after midnight on Jan. 6, the main rescue took place. Four waves of five Sea Knight helicopters each evacuated the entire compound. In the end, 281 people from 30 nations were rescued through the American embassy.

Jean-Claude Van Damme again as one army man , here he is an US commander assigned as second-in-command to the American Embassy in an Eastern European country called Moldavia . Then , communist rebels try a state coup . The official gets free the President and they take shelter into US Embassy nearly deserted that encounters itself under siege by violent insurgents . Meanwhile , Van Damme saves the damsel in disgrace, an enticing journalist (Julie Cox) and he along with a detachment of soldiers fight against nasty attackers which have surrounded the siege .

The picture packs noisy action , shoot-outs , explosions, politic intrigues and minimum characterization . It's exciting and tense , at time lackluster action film , but the blown ups , struggles , gun-play are well done in this routine actioner . The story is plenty of firepower , action packed , fights though is added an interesting politic suspense . Scott Adkins , who subsequently starred some film with Van Damme , was offered an important role but could not sign for it due to other commitments . Jean Claude Van Damme is fine as action hero in this middling budget film . Long time ago he played big budget movies (Time cop, Universal soldier, Double team , Hard target) , he nowadays makes low budget and directly to video (Derailed, Wake of death, In hell) like in his first films (Black eagle, Cyborg , Bloodsport). The film was well photographed by Douglas Milsone (Dungeons and dragons, Sunchaser, Body of evidence) in natural scenarios of Rumania though the coup détat was happened in Moldavia (ex-Republic of Russia) . The motion picture was professionally directed by Simon Fellows who directed a Wesley Snipes vehicle (7 seconds) and he recently directed ¨Until death¨ again with Jean Claude Van Damme . The film will appeal to action genre enthusiasts . Pointlessly energetic and occasionally fun for only the true devotee of main actor . It's a must see for Van Damme fans .

Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as a soldier who becomes the first in command after the ambassador is murdered by terrorists, along the way Van Damme comes up with a plan to get the soldiers and civilians out before the terrorists take over. Second In Command is one of Van Damme's more one note efforts. One in which reminds one of the vastly superior Sudden Death, however the problem with Second In Command is that it's just plain boring. Van Damme doesn't have really any hand to hand combat sequences and the shootouts are rarely exciting. Fellows tries to go for suspense and fails because the situation is so clichéd and the movie so uninspired. It's as if all the planning went on how to get Van Damme in the position of power and then didn't know what to do with the plot. In other words there just isn't enough plot or momentum in the story to make this all that entertaining. It's a movie that's forgettable and downright dull.

*1/2 out of 4-(Poor)

The film sees Van Damme star as Sam Keenan who is given the task of protecting the new president of Moldavia (made up? Maybe!) from violent protesters and ardent supporters of the country's previous regime. Essentially this is a siege movie, and with a plot somewhat resembling Dolph Lundgren's The Defender. Both movies are very similarly toned, however while Lundgren received mostly positives from that film (and more so from his directorial follow up the Mechanik) Van Damme will probably not earn the plaudits on this one. Now the man himself is not the problem, but the film suffers from amateurish direction and overly ambitious delivery of it's ideas in which the film tries to deliver the requisite amount of atypically military imagery. For instance helicopters make appearances in this film, only mostly they are poorly done CGI helicopters. As such the films attempt to look more expensive results in it looking cheaper. This is where SIC fails and where The Defender did not.

The direction from Simon Fellows lacks imagination, cohesion and competence. The trouble is the director is too quick to try and mimic certain styles from other directors. There is also too much compensation made in the editing room. Many of Fellow's stylistic choices do not work and only serve to hinder the film and whereas Dolph Lundgren made the Defender taut and polished, SIC is sometimes a little slipshod. However as the film progresses, Fellows gets a little more controlled. On a technical standpoint the rest of the film is okay, with mostly polished cinematography and an okay musical score.

The cast are good with Van Damme ably supported by Raz Adoti, Julie Cox and Alan Mckenna and William Tapley. Jean Claude himself is good in a pretty straight down the middle kind of role. He's not required to stretch as much as in Wake Of Death, but Van Damme gives his role a humanity and the role some conviction and thus adds depth to the 2 dimensional character as written on the page. Van Damme is certainly developing as an actor and he now adds so much to roles that other action stars would simply do competently. JC has improved so much and in regards to the action stars of the moment Van Damme is the most interesting as an actor. I certainly hope he stretches himself in future roles, cause I think having matured as a person he has a world weariness to him and an inner depth that shows up in his last few roles and there is now something going on behind those eyes.

The action in the film is okay. In terms of hand to hand combat there as some nice brief flourishes from JC, and there's a average length fight scene at the end but that suffers from poor editing and choice of shots. As for the rest it's primarily gunplay and Fellows chooses to go docu style which half walks and half doesn't. However the last half hour of the film is mostly action and the pace picks up nicely and we have a good amount of explosions going on.

Overall this is not a write off and by no means one of Van Dammes worst. It's good to have him back after a long wait following Wake Of Death, but understandably some fans may be disappointed. I can only say to them that Hard Corps promises much more and that also this film is far better than Seagal's recent turkeys. **1/2

Commander Sam Keenan is appointed second-in-command at the US Embassy in Moldavia, mere hours before the Ambassador is killed. The streets are full of insurgents attempting a violent uprising against the democratically elected president, who is now in the care of the US within the embassy. However with the insurgents laying siege outside and rescue many hours away, options for survival and limited and Keenan comes under pressure from without and within.

In a way I suppose we should see it as Van Damme returning to Europe to use his American-found fame to bolster film-making in Europe, however another way to see it is that his appeal has dwindled badly and he has taken to doing basic action films in Eastern European to squeeze every last penny out of the budget. Watching this film among others, it is hard to avoid the fact that the truth is almost undoubtedly the latter. The plot is fairly basic but in essence it is a war-zone version of Assault on Precinct 13. So what we are a looking for is a ratcheting up of tension across the film, with the silence being harder to watch than the action – which by extension is more exciting for its quality as payoff.

Sadly that is not what the film delivers because instead everything is played out as basic as you like, with minimal tension, obvious plotting, wooden acting and action that plays like they all just hoped having shots of gunfire would be sufficient to justify it as an "action film". It is never awful by any means and indeed for those trawling the cable listings looking for something to have on like visual wallpaper, you could do much worse. But this is hardly praise and all through the film I never shook the feeling of it being a cu-price low rent affair with no aspirations beyond the bottom shelf of the video store and maybe a 2am slot on a cable station. Obviously there is a limited amount of money to play with but this is only an excuse for scale – not for how good a film it is and director Fellows isn't able to do much. His cast don't help, with Van Damme on auto-pilot (without even much action to speak of for him), Cox filling a tired cliché of a female role and nobody else making an impression even if they had been given the material. The Eastern European villains are so bland and generic that even modern video games can produce a more realistic cast of characters.

Second in Command will be found on poor slots on so-so TV stations, was made in Eastern Europe and stars Jean-Claude Van Damme so really one could say that the clues are all right there for you to see for yourself. If you do decide to watch it then please note that it does live up to the low standards it suggests it will have and, while too bland to be really awful, there isn't much about it worth seeing.